Healthy Brock Purdy Is the Best Quarterback in the NFL, and I'm Done Pretending Otherwise
The highest rated passer since the day he got here, a torn elbow, a bad shoulder, a busted foot, and still the numbers. Shanahan and the weapons have nothing to do with it.
I was stuck on the San Mateo Bridge Tuesday night, brake lights all the way to Foster City, with sports talk on because I hate myself. Some guy calls in, sounds perfectly reasonable, and says Brock Purdy is "a top ten quarterback, sure, but you could put a lot of guys in that offense." The host agreed with him. I said something out loud to an empty car that I won't repeat here.
Top ten. Sure.
So let me just say it plainly, since apparently nobody on the radio will. Brock Purdy is the best quarterback in the NFL. Forget the Mr. Irrelevant story for a minute. And I'm not saying it because I've got a jersey with a 13 on it hanging in my closet. I'm saying it because I looked at the numbers, and you can't make them say anything else.
The numbers nobody wants to deal with
Since the day he walked into this league, Brock Purdy has been the most efficient passer in football. His career passer rating is 105.7. Nobody active who's thrown a thousand passes is higher. Lamar Jackson leads the official all time list at 102.4, Aaron Rodgers is at 101.9, and Brock's sitting three points clear of both of them. The only reason his name isn't on top of that list today is that the league makes you throw 1,500 passes to qualify, and he's got 1,436. He's 64 throws away. Probably two games.
He averages 8.7 yards every time he drops back and throws. For his career. Ninety three touchdowns against 38 picks. A 33 and 15 record as a starter. In 2023, his only fully healthy season, he led the entire league in passer rating at 113.0 and threw for 4,280 yards. And right now, through three weeks of 2026? He leads the NFL again. 133.1. Nine touchdowns, one interception, 72 percent completions, and the 49ers are 3 and 0.
I keep waiting for somebody to show me the quarterback who's better than that. Nobody does. They just change the subject.
"It's all Kyle." Okay, explain 2024 then.
The subject they change it to is always Kyle Shanahan. Or the weapons. Purdy's a product of the system, Purdy's throwing to all pros, anybody could do it. I've heard it so many times I could recite it in my sleep, and honestly I think I have.
You want to talk about the weapons? Fine, let's talk about 2024. Christian McCaffrey played four games that year. Four. Brandon Aiyuk tore up his knee in October against Kansas City and never came back. Trent Williams missed the last stretch with a bad ankle, and the offensive line by December looked like a preseason depth chart. That "loaded" roster was a MASH unit. And Brock still threw for 3,864 yards with a sore shoulder, a bad elbow, and pass rushers in his face from the first snap.
Was it his best year? No. It was the worst year of his career, and it would've been a pretty good year for half the starting quarterbacks in this league. Think about that for a second. His floor, in the most broken season this franchise has had since he got here, is somebody else's ceiling.
And the system thing makes me want to throw my remote. Kyle's a genius, I'll give him that all day, but a play call doesn't escape a free rusher, and it doesn't buy three extra seconds rolling right and then throw a strike across his body to a guy who was covered when the ball got snapped. Brock does that every single week. He's run for 12 touchdowns in his career. A lot of the throws that make his highlight reel aren't in any playbook at all. They're him improvising when the play fell apart, which, if you've watched this offensive line the last couple years, happens a lot.
Every great quarterback has a great coach and great players around him. Every single one. Nobody takes that away from the guys in Kansas City or Buffalo or Baltimore. It only becomes a disqualifier when it's the kid who got picked 262nd.
He's been playing hurt a lot more than people remember
This is the part that really gets me, because nobody brings it up when they're grading him.
Go back to the NFC Championship Game in Philadelphia, his rookie year. He tore the UCL in his throwing elbow in the first quarter. Tore it. And when Josh Johnson got knocked out of the game, Brock went back in there with an arm that couldn't throw a ball fifteen yards, because somebody had to take the snaps. Then he had surgery that spring and came back and led the NFL in passer rating. People forget that one. I never will. I was sitting on my living room floor that day, because I couldn't sit on the couch anymore, and I remember thinking this kid's either crazy or the toughest guy on the roster. Turned out it was both.
In 2024 he hurt his right shoulder against Seattle in November, missed the Green Bay game, and came back the next week in a Buffalo snowstorm and kept playing on it. Then he hurt his elbow against the Lions on Monday night in Week 17 and sat the finale. Last year was the turf toe. Week 1 in Seattle, missed two games, came back in Week 4 against Jacksonville way too early, made it worse, and missed six straight after that. Ligament damage in his foot, which for a quarterback who wins by moving around is about the worst thing you can have. Then he took a shot to the left shoulder in the finale and still went into Philadelphia the next week and won a playoff game.
And yeah, I know. Every quarterback gets hurt. Every quarterback plays through stuff. I'm not asking for sympathy points. I'm asking you to look at what the numbers do when he's actually healthy.
Healthy Brock is a different animal
Split it up by the years he was right and the years he wasn't.
Rookie year, healthy for the stretch run: 107.3. 2023, a full healthy season: 113.0, best in the league. 2026 so far, healthy again: 133.1, best in the league again. Now the hurt years. 2024, the shoulder and the elbow: 96.1. 2025, the foot: 100.5.
So his bad years, the ones he played through injuries most guys would've sat out for, still land him around 100. And his healthy years are the best numbers anybody in this sport is putting up. The only thing that's ever slowed the best quarterback in football down is his own body.
When he's healthy, he's the best. Statistically, it's not even an argument. I've looked for the counterargument, I really have, partly so I'm ready for my cousin at Thanksgiving. It isn't there.
So why doesn't he get the love?
Because he was the last pick in the draft, and people decided who he was in December of 2022 and never updated it. Because he doesn't throw it seventy yards on a rope or hurdle linebackers on the highlight shows. Because he's polite in press conferences and doesn't do a dance after a touchdown. Because the Super Bowl ended in overtime and somebody has to wear it.
I get it. It's more fun to talk about a guy who looks like a superhero. But football isn't a dunk contest. The job is moving the ball and putting it in the end zone without giving it to the other team, and nobody in the league has done that job better, per throw, since 2022. Not one guy.
The playoff numbers are the honest knock, and I'll own it. His postseason rating is 89.1, and the Seattle game in January still makes me sick. You can hold that against him. I just want the same people holding it against him to remember he played one of those playoff runs with a torn elbow, and that his regular season résumé is better than every guy the radio puts ahead of him.
Denver comes to Levi's on Sunday with the best defense we've seen so far, and Bosa's out, and I'm already nervous about it in my Broncos preview. If Brock carves them up, maybe the guy on the radio calls back. I doubt it. These people never call back.
Until then I'll keep tracking every throw on our Purdy stats page, counting down those last 64 attempts like it's New Year's Eve. If you want the rest of my yelling, there's the column I wrote after Arizona, and who's hurt this week lives on the 49ers injury report. Every game this season is on the 2026 schedule hub.
Best quarterback in the NFL. I said it on the bridge, I'm saying it here, and I'm not taking it back.
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